The Speakers

Licia Verde is an ICREA professor at Instituto de Ciencias del Cosmos, Universitat de Barcelona (ICCUB) where she leads the Cosmology & Large-Scale Structures research group. She is scientific director of the ICCUB and scientific director of JCAP. Her research focuses on the large-scale structure of the universe, the cosmic microwave background, galaxy surveys and statistical tools to analyse and interpret cosmological data.

Reinhard Genzel is one of the Directors of Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Professor in the Graduate School of the University of California, Berkeley and an Honorary Professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich. In 2020, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Andrea Ghez, for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy. Through the development of cutting-edge infrared instrumentation, his research has transformed our understanding of the extreme environments around black holes and the co-evolution of galaxies. These studies have also enabled remarkable tests of general relativity in the universe’s most extreme gravitational settings.

Renato Renner is Professor in the Department of Physics at ETH Zürich and Head of the Institute for Theoretical Physics. His research explores the deep intersection of physical laws and information theory. He is widely known for foundational contributions to quantum information, including the development of rigorous frameworks that establish the security of quantum communication. Beyond applications, Renner’s work addresses profound conceptual questions at the heart of modern physics, shedding light on how physical reality is described by different observers and how principles of quantum information can inform our understanding of thermodynamics, gravity, and the black hole information paradox.

Pedro G. Ferreira is the Head of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford and the Director of the Beecroft Institute of Particle Physics and Cosmology. He studied and worked at Imperial College in London, at the University of California at Berkeley and at CERN in Geneva. He won the Gerald Whitrow Prize 2022 and the Eddington Medal 2024 of the Royal Astronomical Society. Professor Ferreira’s area of expertise is cosmology where he has studied the relic radiation left over from the Big Bang, the nature of dark matter and dark energy, and has led the way in studying alternatives to Einstein’s theory of General Relativity. His book, “The Perfect Theory: A Century of Geniuses and the Battle over General Relativity” was shortlisted for the 2014 Royal Society Winton Science Book Prize.